Orphanages Put New Look On Old Image

Many teenagers at the Mercy Boys Home in Chicago cannot conjure up the image of a home with both a mother and a father.

If they ever had that sort of family, it was so long ago that they can`t remember. In between, they have resided with relatives and foster families, and in institutions.

Now they are living with about 55 other boys at Mercy, in single and double rooms that resemble college dorm rooms. Those boys willing to play by Mercy`s strict rules are content to stay there.

They have long ago given up the fantasy of returning to a storybook Mom and Dad. They have little desire to try to fit into another foster or adoptive family.

``I`ve been here a few months, and it`s going great,`` said Brian, 17, whose mother died when he was 6 and whose father has been involved with drugs. ``I`m finally going toward something to better myself. All I want from society now is the tuition to go to college.``

At Mercy, he said, ``there`s a lot of support. We learn how to live independently, which is what I want.``

Old-fashioned orphanages do not exist anymore, and places such as Mercy, where children can remain until they`re ready to be on their own, are a rarity. Most institutions for children are ``residential treatment

facilities,`` designed to treat emotional problems on a temporary basis.

But a growing number of child welfare experts are arguing that orphanages should have a place in today`s world-at least for a minority of children who are either too old to be adopted or who have already made several unsuccessful attempts at living with families.

The best candidates for group care are considered to be older children. They make up one-third of the rapidly growing foster care population, which has expanded to 20,133 children in Illinois, up from 14,652 in 1987.

``It is a futile exercise to keep these kids in a limbo status while we say to them, `We will be reuniting you with your parents,` `` said Joyce Ladner, a professor of social work at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

``We have to look more carefully at individual children and their needs. If it really appears we can`t find a satisfying foster home, and we do not have a clue as to how long it will take to rehabilitate the parents, then I am willing to bite the bullet and say, `Take the child and put him someplace where they can have some stability.` ``

Federal legislation passed in 1980 dictates that wards of the state must be helped back into a family situation as quickly as possible. The main aim is to return them to their biological parents.

The children are to stay with relatives or foster families until the biological parents can resume their responsibility. But in thousands of cases, that means the children end up being passed from home to home to home, often for many years, without any permanent place in which to grow up.

An article by Ladner last year in the Washington Post, headlined ``Bring back the orphanage,`` sounded an alarm through the social work profession, where many experts shudder at the word ``orphanage.``

But Ladner`s mail and phone calls were overwhelmingly positive, and many of her respondents were people who grew up in orphanages. They wrote and called to tell her that they had appreciated their upbringing and remain in touch with their fellow residents.

``I used the term orphanage deliberately to get attention,`` Ladner said. ``And I`m not talking 800 cots lined up in a single room. I`m talking about five or six children in a home, really extended fostering.

``After all, most children in families today grow up with some kind of caretaker who isn`t their mother-either day care or a baby-sitter. Why should this be so controversial?``

But it is. Social workers and child welfare experts insist that children need a family setting to form close attachments and learn how to get along with others. They say orphanages are too impersonal and harmful to normal psychological development.

``So often we see group homes as the easy way out,`` said Barbara Blum, director of the Foundation for Child Development in New York. ``But it turns out not to be.``

Any home larger than 12 beds is too impersonal, Blum said, and even smaller ones deny children the opportunity for the kinds of crucial social interaction that comes with a family, such as talk around a dinner table.

``Group homes do all the things we don`t want to do to children,`` Blum said. ``With the turnover in staff in and out, children do not have the steady flow of support that helps all of us to grow.``

The emphasis instead, Blum said, should be on making a quicker decision to terminate parents` rights so that children can be placed while they are younger in permanent adoptive homes.

``Group care is not about the needs of children,`` said Donna Petras, the statewide foster care coordinator. ``It reduces the approach to putting them someplace and feeding them and pretending that everything is all right.``